Unity Catalog is an open catalogue for governing tables, files, functions and AI models across data platforms. It is released under the Apache 2.0 licence and is compatible with the Apache Iceberg REST catalog and Hive metastore APIs, so it can work with a range of data engines. Organisations run the server themselves, for example with Docker Compose or from a source build, which keeps the catalogue and its metadata inside their own infrastructure.
Databricks developed the catalogue from 2021 and later donated it to the LF AI & Data Foundation, where it is a sandbox project. The Linux Foundation is a non-profit organisation under US tax status, and the project describes itself as a community effort rather than the product of a single company. Databricks sells a separate managed Unity Catalog service, which is a different product. For a European organisation, a self-hosted server keeps metadata under local control, while the project's governance sits with a US-based foundation and support depends on the chosen operator.